The Life I've Led
by tomweaverdrums
Summary: Response to a challenge to write a 1000 word Emerald back-story in under 60 minutes. Didn't quite manage it as it comes in at 1,012. Explores her early life and the circumstances that led her to meet Cinder.


Strangely, Emerald Sustrai's life began with promise, daughter of the local police sheriff and a famed jewellery maker. While not rich, her family lived in relative comfort in a well-known area of Southern Mistral. Her social life was active, with many close friends, and her grades were beyond exceptional for a girl of her age. This all changed one day when she was 6 and her father was one of twelve killed on duty when he was sent to assist the local Huntsman with a Grimm horde that was passing dangerously close to the town.

His death affected her mother in a big way, her production of the ornate hand-crafted jewellery that had given the family their fortune dwindled and then stopped. She slowly turned to alcohol, what started as simply an extra glass of wine in the evening turned into a pre-teen Emerald having to wade through bottles o reach her, passed out in her bed.

This, later coupled with a stroke that resulted in the loss of most of her left side, forced Emerald to drop out of school at age 14 and begin working illegally to support her and her mother. She would work long hours in the many bars and clubs of Downtown Mistral, getting paid cash-in-hand and would most nights be escorted home by a club regular named Dominic.

Dominic had suffered similar circumstances as a child and, later in life, lost his only daughter to a Grimm attack. It was for these reasons that he took a shine to young Emerald and, as her relationship with her mother deteriorated, he began to play the role of a replacement father. It was when she returned home one night to find her mother dead in their kitchen, her head split open and bleeding all over the tiled floor from falling while drunk, that Dominic offered her his home and his care.

However Dominic's wife was not as accepting of Emerald as he was. Forcing her to pay rent, which was conveniently the exact amount she earned, she would purposely lock her out of the flat they shared while Dominic was away on business, forcing her to sleep outside. She would routinely deprive her of meals, leading to her scavenging through the trash. She once beat her with a belt after she shattered a plate while being forced to wash up after an increasingly rare family meal. She had waited until Dominic had gone to bed and then laid into Emerald with all of her might, causing everlasting scars, both physically and mentally.

It was through these, and various other slowly worsening acts of emotional and physical abuse, that Emerald became involved with crime. She had been banished from the flat once again without food and, while huddled against the winter cold, she discovered her semblance and the ability it gave her to be a world-class pickpocket. That night was the first in months that she had eaten a warm meal that she hadn't been tasked to either make or clear up, and it awakened something inside her.

A few months later she was kicked out of Dominic's flat by his wife after he suffered a stress-related heart attack in his sleep and passed away. She regularly visited his grave right up until her meeting with Cinder and subsequent departure from Mistral. For a few years she paid her way through life with the money earned by pickpocketing, either by petty theft or, after her skills drew some attention in Mistral's criminal underworld, working for various employers.

She learned very quickly to not ask questions as to why people had come to her and why they wanted what they did from the people that they did. She became a professional thief-for-hire, working for anyone willing to pay her. She, unaware of their future mutual involvement with Cinder and the White Fang, also performed several jobs for Roman Torchwick. His were often the toughest and best paying with one of them requiring her to steal IDs from 12 different factory workers spread across the city in a single night. She manged 11 out of the 12, with the last one belonging to a man who was somehow able to see past her semblance. He caught her in the act and called the police. Using other, more conventional methods of deception, she escaped. Barely.

However, things did not always go ideally and, after being ratted out by a client, she was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for multiple thefts and for involvement in multiple high level conspiracies. After serving 8 months of her sentence she was able to escape thanks to her semblance, a gullible guard and his inability to keep track of his keys.

Her time in prison changed her personality greatly however, she no longer accepted work from her previous contacts, focusing solely on herself. The fewer people involved, the fewer people you have to worry about betraying you would become her motto. This idea of survival at all costs led her once again to the streets and back-alleys of Mistral, where she was free to live off other people's hard-earned money. But soon things began to change, cashless currency and unique IDs took over and her work became harder than ever. Her skills were pushed to the test and ultimately didn't live up.

She began to struggle to feed herself once again and became desperate, forced to return to rooting through the trash desperate for anything edible. Desperate for shelter due to the approaching winter and driven mad by hunger, she figured that if she could just get something, anything, to sell on then maybe she could eat finally.

Thinking back to her childhood she remembered her mother's fondness for jewellery, that's how she would guarantee a meal. The very next day she walked into a jewellers on the outskirts of Mistral's main city, not knowing that her life was about the change forever.


End file.
